Easiest to Hardest ...

[Rawckett]

For me, I think research is the worst. I'm 298 in tinkering, and found really no trouble there. I didn't mind spending the time farming, and with the Culteral Path it was fairly easy. I got to 290 before Sunshard, so that makes it even easier. But Research just is awful. I hate it. LOL.

Brewing is by far the easiest I think.

[Marissas]

IMO (dont slap me) Sunshard Ore has made tradeskilling just way too easy. Of course, I speak as someone who maxed most tradeskills BEFORE its implementation.... so maybe I'm just jealous

Honestly with several thousand Sunshard Ore.... most trades are easy. (at least the ones with that as a regeant)

[Nolrog]

I thought poison making was pretty easy actually. The biggest headache was the stupid advanced vials, and even that could be made easier if you had the seal. There were tons of golden ember and phos powder on the vendors, that I considered them pretty much vendor sold.

I thought brewing was easier than baking. Because all the stuff was vendor buyable. It's mostly that way for baking if you do MTPs, but there are a lot more subcombines (plus you do have to farm up a couple brownie parts.)

1. Tailoring
2. Smithing

3. Pottery
4. Jewelcraft
5. Fletching
6 Poison
7 Baking
8. Brewing

I left off research and alchemy from my list, because I feel I'm not a good judge of those two. My researcher is in the 180s or so, but that was mostly done when you could train it and my alchemist is woefully low level that I won't mention it. I'm also not a great judge of fletching, since my fletcher is a wood elf. That made things easier than other people have it.

[Meltheanlor]

My list would look like this:
hardest
1. Research
2. Tailoring
3. Smithing
4. Tinkering
5. Fletching
6. Jewelcrafting
7. Alchemy
8. Brewing
9. Baking

Research has been hands down the most expensive TS for me so far. I don't have a master Tinker yet but that will be very soon. My Main is a druid so the foraging stuff has been easy.

[SincroFashad]

As a person who has pretty much gone from every tradeskill (other then make poison) under 100 as of July 15, to the levels you see in my signature now, I would rank em as follows: (Please note, this is from the point of view as a dark elf... go go nightmare arachnid silks!)

Smithing
Tailoring
Fletching
Make poison
Jewelcraft
Pottery
Brewing
Baking

I did MTPs from 267 to 300 in a 3 hour span. I had 15 brownie parts and 30 fruit pre-acquired. Although the subcombines are annoying, I didn't find the subcombines anywhere remotely as bad as the thousands of celestial essence I needed to create for both make poison and pottery. Virtually every MTP subcombine has a yield of 10+, and I was able to prep each batch of 100 MTP combines in about 15 minutes in CR.

And, as an aside, I can't imagine what tradeskilling must have been like prior to sunshard... That stuff short-circuited so many difficult stages in both tailoring and smithing.

[Bobaten]

And, as an aside, I can't imagine what tradeskilling must have been like prior to sunshard... That stuff short-circuited so many difficult stages in both tailoring and smithing.

And tinkering and research (it also moved JC from being not to expensive storebought to free while you skill up a second skill).

[Croakd Bertoxx]

Thanks for the feedback, folks. This gives me an idea of where to take my TS'ing since I've maxxed my alchemy.

[Newcromancer]

I'd say anyone who has not listed research as the hardest clearly hasn't maxed it. It is by far the hardest to max followed by tailoring.

[Wyvernwill]

Of the basic seven, generally is:
Tailoring
Fletching
Smithing
Jewelcraft/Pottery
Brewing/Baking

Side notes: Tailoring is generally heralded as the hardest of the basic seven, and with good reason... no vendor purchased path up. Fletching was made considerably easier when TSS came out due to Treant Branch drops from lower level treants. Previous to that change, I would have ranked fletching as more difficult than tailoring. Sunshard stuff in TBS gave fairly equal routes for Tailoring, Smithing, Jewelcraft and Fletching.

As for the restricted tradeskills:
Spell Research
Tinkering
Alchemy
Poison Making

Research and Tinkering are both some what of a pain, however research is generally harder to farm for. For skilling up, Tinkering gets a 2 to 1 return on Research (where research can use the final tinkered item Small Cores). Research has a generally faster skill gain than Tinkering as well however. Tinkering also has the ability to use Yttrium Ore in addition to Sunshard Pebbles to do a majority of the skilling. Both items are easily farmed in The Deep off of low-ish level mobs (grey to max level). In order to get the majority of 62+ parchments to get research past 243, you need to hunt mobs that are considerably harder to solo (class/level the same).

In the end... when all are compared out, I'd go with:
Research
Tinkering
Tailoring
Fletching
Smithing
Alchemy/Pottery/Jewelcraft
Baking/Brewing/Poison Making

[olhoss]

I mostly agree with Dutchy, above, but I am having a hard time seeing why Smithing is so hard to max. If you can find a cleric or druid to imbue the emeralds, there are a lot of subcombines but you can buy everything to do sickles. I didn't want to mess with shadowscream stuff so I did sickles from 200 on up.

Tedious, yes but not hard. I can see why the sickles will get their trivial nerfed.

Research isn't all that bad if the parchments are available. Doing the solutions to 243 isn't bad, then a lot of spells to cap it. It's just a matter of how available/expensive the parts are.

Maxing Fletching is still horrendous if you don't have the cultural ability, though getting to 282 is easy.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Nonsense... there are forage bots in bazaar who sell everything you need to max flething. Before, yes it was hard, now a few hours in bazaar maxxed it.

Especially since you get 2 for 1 on PoR bows. One chance to skillup on the bowstaff one on the final bow combine.

[Roanne]

Honestly, since sunshard ore was introduced there is no such thing as a hard tradeskill to max anymore (and Ive max'd them all except poison making). Its all degrees of relativity and time but assuming you have some economic sense, dedication, and patience, they can all be max'd within a few months.

Some are clearly easier than others. Brewing and Jewelcrafting being the easiest in my opinion. I max'd them both in an afternoon.

Smithing and Tailoring are the hardest of the basic tradeskills but I dont think tinkering or research were significantly more difficult. Id say tailoring is the hardest overall because you need to farm your skillups almost the entire way through it, but again sunshard ore has significantly lowered the curve.

Do your research, plan on a skillup path, and dont expect to get rich doing it.

Have fun too.

[melkorr]

Nonsense... there are forage bots in bazaar who sell everything you need to max flething. Before, yes it was hard, now a few hours in bazaar maxxed it.

Especially since you get 2 for 1 on PoR bows. One chance to skillup on the bowstaff one on the final bow combine.

On Bertox, there are rarely ANY of the treant branches for sale, never more than 2 or 3. I'm at 284 fletching, farming treant branches in Mesa because Frogloks don't get forage.

[Rasky]

For Treant branches kill the treants around the swamp in Blightfire Moors...

Oops... secrets out now....

As a Dark Elf Warrior that was my savior for Fletching. Still need 5 tailoring skill-ups for 2100 though.

Sunshard has not been kind to me there. Probably since I don't buy the ingrediants in bazaar. I think I've probably done about 600 Sunshard combines going from 287 to 295. And 2 of those skill-ups where from making Nightmare Bracers.

Rasky
Quell

[Bobaten]

I still don't think research is the hardest when you include cost (as the OP did), simply because I made a profit on every single combine I did. The only thing that is really hard is the sheer number of subcombines--but at least everything stacks.